When your significant other reaches the point where he (or she) hates his job or his boss so much he either needs to quit or he’s going out on a roof somewhere to shoot out a busload of kindergartners, you got some options.

Really, the correct answer is, “Okay baby, so do you have a plan, or is it so bad you just need to quit and we’ll come up with one as we go?” And then you either clean the firearms for him or hide the firearms from him, depending on what plan you all work out. So you learn to make tasty snacks from discarded pizza boxes[1] and have that little crazy laugh with accompanying facial tic for a while, but in the long run, it’s a shitload better than contributing to the planetary cumulative unhappy asshole level.

Sometimes the plan needs a little refinement. Like if his plan runs along the lines of “I think I’ll continue Steve Irwin’s work in the Great Barrier Reef, so I’m cashing in all our savings and flying by the seat of my pants to Australia tomorrow,” you might want to say, “Whoa there, Jacques Cousteau, kookookachoo, back the bus up. Your plan lacks a certain, um, -- well, quite frankly it sucks so hard I lost a shoe in it.”

Sometimes this is the “interesting” point where you discover you’re with the wrong person. I made this discovery with my first husband, whose plan -- when he quit a job he hated -- was, “Ok, now you go get a job you hate. We’ll live off your credit cards and I’m gonna run for office.” Mmm. Yeah. About that. Not so much, idiot. Let’s hope for his sake he’s done better with someone else.

If you married for money, well then -- now, of course, would be the time to go for your Contingency Plan. Tell him to sleep on it, then inject your Botox into whatever creepy food he loves but you hate, and bring it to him as a midnight snack. Then enjoy your inheritance and the insurance money (you did insure him, didn’t you?) and look smashing at the funeral in the outfit you’ve had ready since the wedding.

For fuck’s sake, stop looking at me like that. You all know I’m capable of it.

Fortunately, my man also came home with a plan that did not suck my shoes off, so I get to be the supportive fantasy chick, racking up “I was there for you, baby” points redeemable for shiny bling in later years.

Now, I just need to insure him. ;)

EDIT: When The Man read this, all he said was, "Yummy Botox." I shit you not. That's my man! :D

Gawd, this sounds like when I left Lynncarthy. Met my wife for lunch and said, "Can I quit? I promise I'll be at the temp agencies first thing Monday, but I gotta get out now!" It wasn't that I hated what I was doing, but Kate and Leo were waltzing on the deck, and I hate my baths cold.

Mike was honestly so fed up with his job with the Bell/AT&T merger - procedures changing on alternate days etc. That he felt he'd have less stress being deployed to a war zone. Hmmmm.... Bell / Iraq -- Iraq is tax free, but I'd miss Pennsic...

Duuuude! Talk about a situation sucking so hard you lost your shoe in it -- you lost your woman, your pizza boxes, and your dryer lint! Like the LaBrea tar pit of suckage, future generations will find the fossilized bones of your shattered dreams at the bottom of some construction site along with your wet laundry, my dryerless pizza-starved Obi-Wan-you're-my-only-hope-quoting friend.